


Chances

by powerandpathos



Series: 19 Days After-Shots [2]
Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Fluff, M/M, aftercare (non-sexually), guan shan is a Great Nurse, idk anymore, summer days, what happens after update 185
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 14:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8848378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: A vignette of Guan Shan and He Tian’s interaction directly after 185. (The hand/friends update.)





	

‘Idiot,’ Guan Shan says.

He hasn’t stopped saying it.

He Tian needs to hear it, even when his palm is bloody and his neck has marks on that Guan Shan can’t stop staring at. And his smile—it wavers.

 _Fake,_ Guan Shan used to say. He used to think it was dangerous, that smile. He thought it could make anyone do anything, and he was terrified because he thought, too, that it might make him do anything if He Tian wore it long enough.

And it’s fake now, but there are shards of realness that cling at the edges, sitting in the cracks of He Tian’s lower lip, and Guan Shan doesn’t know what to do with that smile.

It’s fake, but it’s real, and it’s fond.

 _Don’t look at me like that,_ he thinks. He can’t bear to be looked at like that for too long. He doesn’t know what it will make him do.

He pulls He Tian away by the wrist. They go around the back of the school, between shaded buildings and trees that dart shadows across their shoes and across their skin. Out the corner of his eye, his jacket is growing dark in He Tian’s bloody fist. When the sun slips behind an awning or the metal grating of a fence as they move, it looks black.

He can hear a bell ringing, and he knows that the teachers will be looking for him—for He Tian, too, but he can’t think about that now.

He can only think about this.

‘Where are we going?’ says He Tian. His voice is light. He sounds like he’s laughing.

Guan Shan used to think he was laughing at him, until he realised that He Tian was just always laughing at himself.

‘Shut up,’ Guan Shan says. ‘Idiot,’ he adds. For good measure.

They end up by one of the outdoor sinks, next to the sports building. Guan Shan remembers the last time they had stood here, when He Tian had held out a note between his fingertips. He is still not certain he knows quite what it means, and if he wants to.

Things, he thinks, are moving very fast.

He Tian leans against the sink, like he had last time. He’s holding his hand up, keeping it elevated, blood dripping down his wrist, and he has his feet crossed at the ankles.

Guan Shan can’t help but admire how, leaning against a concrete sink and bleeding from a palm sliced from finger to thumb, He Tian still manages to look remarkably, arrogantly fascinating.

‘Take your jacket off,’ Guan Shan says, stopping the sink, and turning the tap on.

He Tian raises an eyebrow, but he does it anyway.

_First time he’s ever listened to me._

Guan Shan watches him shrug out of the dark jacket. Underneath, he is only wearing a black vest, and it makes his skin look paler than it should. Parts of his skin are angry, red blotches—the beginnings of bruises working their way across tender skin: shoulders and the side of his neck and the pale space beneath his collar bones.

Guan Shan can’t help but notice the curve of his biceps, the single blue vein that runs down each of them. The slope of muscle behind his neck that joins broad shoulders. The hands that suddenly look larger—that had seemed so big against Guan Shan’s when he held his jacket up to the bleeding palm. Had they felt that big when they were around his throat?

Guan Shan takes the jacket, and puts it in the sink. The water turns red.

He wrings it out, empties the sink, refills, and repeats until the water runs clear and the jacket is dark from water and because it’s black, and not because it’s black with He Tian’s blood.

He Tian’s blood.

Guan Shan closes his eyes, for a moment.

When he opens them, He Tian is watching him. There is sunlight creeping in through the leaves of the tree bowing above them, casting pretty shadows across his face, and a quiet breeze disturbs He Tian’s dark hair. He is pale, and bloodied, and his eyes are dark, but Guan Shan looks at him and thinks he looks like summer.

‘Come here,’ Guan Shan murmurs. He takes his jacket, and he knows that he can’t take it home like this. Surely the blood is never going to come out of this. He washes it out as best as he can, until it’s a pale pink, and then pulls on He Tian’s wrist.

He Tian hisses as the water rushes over his hand, but Guan Shan’s fingers are tight around his wrist, tight enough that he’s not sure if the pulse he can feel is He Tian’s or his own, and He Tian doesn’t try to move anyway.

‘Ow,’ says He Tian.

‘You’re the one who won’t go to the stupid nurse.’

‘Don’t be rude. She’s a lovely woman.’

Guan Shan grits his teeth. Of course she is. He Tian has half the school in love with him—it wouldn’t surprise him to know he’s got some young woman in a white uniform head over heels for him either.

‘She’s fifty, with two Rottweilers, and says I remind her of her son.’

Guan Shan stares at the concrete wall behind the sink. ‘I didn’t say anything,’ he says.

He Tian doesn’t reply, and Guan Shan can feel only that he is laughing at him with those dark eyes. They seem to say more than He Tian has ever said to him. They seem to watch him in a way that no one else’s have done. Except it’s not watching—it’s seeing, and it wasn’t long before Guan Shan understood the difference.

It wasn’t long before he understood _why_ , exactly, being seen beneath those eyes made him feel different than he did under the gaze of anyone else. It wasn’t long before he began to catch the way the eyes would fall somewhere that wasn’t Guan Shan’s eyes. No, instead they fell to his neck, where he could feel the thrum of his pulse. Instead they fell to his eyebrows, and the lines of his forehead drawn into anger. Instead they fell to his lips.

Guan Shan looks down, and the water is running clear, and He Tian’s hand is flesh-coloured again. Guan Shan pulls it out from beneath the faucet, and brings it close to his face. There is a long, pink coloured line running from his little finger across his palm to his thumb. It is not particularly deep, and it looks raw and open, but it doesn’t bleed when Guan Shan presses carefully around the wound. He can’t see any dirt in it, and the cut is smooth and clean, like whoever cut it knew what they were doing. Like, it was a mark, not an angry slash. It might scar.

Guan Shan thinks, for a second, about putting his lips on He Tian’s palm. And then his nose screws up, and he remembers that he’s ridiculous, and a little disgusting. He wants to put his head under the tap.

‘Will I live?’ says He Tian quietly. There’s a perpetual smile at the edges of his lips. His eyes are a question.

 _Oh,_ thinks Guan Shan. He hasn’t let go of He Tian’s hand. _We’re joking._

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. Because He Tian teased him, mocked him, but he didn’t joke _with him._ It was always strictly one-way. They didn’t—do this. But now, apparently, they did.

Guan Shan swallows. ‘If you’re good.’

It’s the wrong thing to say. He knows it as soon as the words have left his mouth. He can feel them, a strange aftertaste on his tongue. There were so many things he could have said—so many snappish retorts. And, instead, this? He closes his eyes.

He realises, after a moment, that the sound he can hear is laughter. He Tian is laughing. Guan Shan opens his eyes again, because he has never really seen this before. There’s a flush on He Tian’s cheeks, and his eyes are bright in strange, unexpected delight.

 _It’s the blood loss_ , Guan Shan’s mind provides, distantly. _The adrenaline._ But he knows he hasn’t bled much—not at all. The laugh is warm, and deep, and it sounds as surprised as Guan Shan feels, and he feels it everywhere. It is like He Tian has pressed that laugh into his skin, and Guan Shan doesn’t know how to keep it there before it runs back out.

Guan Shan stares at him, and after a while, when the laughter fades, a lingering, warm thing, He Tian stares back.

‘I’ll be good,’ he says.

Guan Shan lets go of his hand, and turns back to the sink. He wrings out he Tian’s jacket and spreads it out across the edge of the sink. He wrings out his own, and has it bunched in his fist when he turns back to He Tian.

He realises how quiet He Tian has been, just waiting and watching, like he’s not sure what Guan Shan is about to do next, and Guan Shan entertains the ridiculous notion that He Tian might be nervous. Why would he be nervous?

_Because he nearly got himself killed for you, and he’s not sure if that’s even worthy of a thank you._

The thought is an arresting thing. Surely, he thinks, He Tian can’t want a thank you. Surely he can’t be waiting—hoping for that from him. When has that ever been a thing that they did? When have _thank you’s_ and _I’m sorry’s_ and _forgive me’s_ ever been a part of how they worked?

But Guan Shan knew that there was no set way of how they _worked_. They could re-write it and revaluate it if they wanted. This—all of this—has barely lasted a week. It’s terrifying that he could have lost everything in a few days, but he thinks it’s more terrifying that he could feel this much in just as many.

Guan Shan reaches out, and his arm is shaking when his wet jacket touches the side of He Tian’s neck. He dabs, lightly, and he can feel how hard He Tian’s jaw is. He Tian’s eyes are burning and, like before, he can’t look. He moves the jacket down to the side of He Tian’s neck, where there is a thin, pinkish line. It has the promise of being what is on his hand, which would have bled far more than his hand has, and Guan Shan finds himself staring at it as he cleans the blood and the dust away from He Tian’s skin.

‘What did he use?’ he says, hand moving. His voice sounds vague and disinterested, and he’s glad for it.

‘Just a shiv,’ He Tian says. ‘He thought he had me.’

_Just a shiv._

‘How did you beat him?’ Guan Shan asks.

‘Beat him?’

‘You’re here. You’re still standing. How did you win?’

‘Does it matter?’

Guan Shan lifts his eyes to meet He Tian’s. They’re giving nothing away—when have they ever?—but Guan Shan can’t help but feel that he is being lied to. It’s the strangest feeling. Why would He Tian lie to him? What on earth could possibly be worth He Tian hiding the truth from him? Their relationship, thus far, has been an awful thing of biting words and flying fists, but there’s been a kind of brutal honesty to it that Guan Shan has craved, too.

The thought that, now, He Tian might turn his back on it, is infuriating. It is like, now that Guan Shan has needed _saving_ , He Tian is trying to save him from everything else too.

‘It matters,’ Guan Shan says carefully.

He Tian’s look doesn’t change. It’s blank, but somehow—guarded. Guan Shan thinks he might be coming to read He Tian a little. Either that, or He Tian’s barriers are slipping a little. Either way, the shift that is breaking between them is _frightening._

‘It was just a fight, Guan Shan,’ He Tian says. ‘I just managed to knock him out. That’s all it was.’

Guan Shan feels his heart skip when He Tian uses his name. No one has ever really used it much, and now He Tian has said it twice. And Jian Yi had said it too. What does it mean that people are starting to associate him with a name? It feels strange hearing something that is totally his on someone else’s tongue. It feels strange hearing He Tian say it when he is looking at him like he is. It feels, somehow, intensely private.

‘If you’re sure,’ Guan Shan says, with a shrug. He thinks about She Li, and doubts entirely that He Tian could ever have knocked him out. Not because he underestimates He Tian, but because he knows She Li, too. He wonders what it’s going to be like to walk the halls in the last few weeks of school, and know that She Li might be there, and not even He Tian could remove him from their lives entirely. It would take more than this.

They’re silent as Guan Shan rinses out his jacket—his makeshift cloth—and wipes it across He Tian’s neck and his brow and his cheekbones. His lips. His clavicle, lifting and sinking with each slow, sure breath.

Eventually, his skin is clean and relatively unmarked, but there are bruises starting to peak through beneath the surface, and it is paler than usual. Guan Shan glances at the dark rings beneath his eyes, and wonders if he slept last night.

Guan Shan hadn’t slept, either. He wonders if He Tian had been thinking about him at all.

 _Ridiculous,_ he thinks. _I really need to stick my head in that sink now._

He crouches down and reaches a hand beneath the sink, fingers brushing in the dusty ground, and then he feels the crinkle of plastic packaging.

He Tian is staring at him, bewildered, as he stands back up and dusts down his knees.

‘Dressings,’ Guan Shan says, opening the small package.

‘You know,’ says He Tian, conversational, holding out his hand when Guan Shan jerks his chin. ‘Most people stash cigarettes and sneaky bottles of vodka.’ The skin is dry now, the summer heat pressing on them both, but the cut looks an angry red now the water has gone. Guan Shan wonders how much it hurts.

‘I’ve been in a lot of fights,’ says Guan Shan.

‘I know.’

‘My mother got worried when my clothes had blood on,’ he continues, ignoring that. _I know._ What did he know? ‘And I couldn’t keep going to _your_ nurse, so… This.’

‘You shouldn’t have had to clean yourself up,’ He Tian says.

‘Yeah, well.’

Guan Shan presses the palm-sized dressing gently against the wound, and then carefully wraps the mesh-like bandage around his palm, hooking it around his thumb and wrist to keep it in place. He ties a knot with the two ends, and tucks it underneath the bandaged layers at He Tian’s wrist.

‘It looks a lot worse than it is,’ says He Tian, turning his hand back and forth like he’s admiring the handiwork. There’s an element of surprise in it, like he hadn’t quite expected Guan Shan of being capable of something like that.

‘It looks exactly as bad as it is,’ says Guan Shan.

‘Yeah, well,’ says He Tian, eyes glinting. ‘I suppose you would know. What with you being friends with She Li and all.’

‘We’re not friends.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm,’ says He Tian. He folds his arms. ‘Because, you know, it sort of seemed that way. With the whole—’ he let his hand wave in a random gesture ‘—pinning sexual assault on you kind of thing.’

Guan Shan bites his cheek. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like that.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘What was it supposed to be like?’

He knows what he can say. He knows what the truth is. But it sounds ridiculous to him now. _I needed money that bad that I was willing to do anything_. Had it all only been last night that he’d said yes? He knows, too, that He Tian knows exactly what had happened, and why it happened.

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s done.’

‘Yes,’ says He Tian. ‘It is.’

Guan Shan ignores him, and the way his voice seems to be asking him if he wants to _say_ anything about that. If he’d cared to give an _opinion_ on the fact that it’s all over—because He Tian has dealt with it. He ignores it, because he doesn’t know what to say, and has never known what to say, and this—cleaning his hand, bandaging him up, washing the dirt from his face, is all he thinks he knows how to do. It’s not the least he can do: it’s all he can do.

‘Keep the bandage on,’ Guan Shan mutters, wringing out his jacket. He knows it’s ruined. But it’s something to do with his hands. ‘And—get some antibacterial ointment. You should probably apply it three times a day. Try not to get it too wet. It’ll get infected.’

‘I probably shouldn’t do much with it either,’ says He Tian. ‘You know. Nothing strenuous. Like housework.’

Guan Shan looks at him. He Tian looks back. He’s smiling again. Briefly, Guan Shan thinks about hitting him.

‘You never did anything anyway.’

‘Rude.’

‘Your kitchen took me two hours to clean.’

He Tian scratches his jaw. ‘I—Yes, I’ll give you that.’

‘And I don’t know when the last time you did laundry was.’

‘I have someone do that for me,’ He Tian says easily.

Guan Shan blinks. ‘Of course you do.’

He Tian looks like he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t, and there’s a moment of silence. The faucet is dripping quietly, and they can hear cicadas buzzing softly around the school grounds and across the sports pitches. Somewhere, there’s a teacher’s voice droning sleepily through an open classroom window. Somewhere, there’s a locker door slamming and a girl’s warm, easy laughter. It’s a nice sound.

They are trapped in a bubble of shadowed, halcyon summer warmth, and it feels strange to share something like this that isn’t cruel words and crueller kisses.

Guan Shan looks at their jackets, black and pinkish-white, draped across the sink. ‘They’re pretty wet,’ he says, and there is water dripping from the hems onto the ground beneath.

‘It’ll dry in a few hours,’ He Tian says calmly.

Guan Shan watches as he wanders to the tree a little way off, and slides down onto the grass, back against the trunk, careful not to use his hand or get it dirty. He settles himself, and it’s like watching a panther spread itself out across a fallen, barren tree trunk in the jungle, wide, yawning jaws, and sleepy eyes. A tail flicking away gnats in lazy curiosity.

He Tian is staring at Guan Shan.

Guan Shan stares back.

He isn’t fooled; he knows that He Tian would be ready to snap in a second. And yet—and it’s ridiculous—he’s moving. He’s sitting next to him, head rolling back onto the tree bark. Against every survival instinct he should be listening to right now, their shoulders are touching, He Tian’s bare skin touching his t-shirt. The backs of their hands brush, and it’s an accident, at first, but neither of them move, so the second and third times it happens, it’s not an accident.

And Guan Shan says, ‘I have time.’

‘Lucky,’ says He Tian, a warm, sated thing. His eyes are closing. Guan Shan thinks he might be given a moment to see him sleep, and he’s not sure what to do with that opportunity. ‘So do I.’

Guan Shan tries to push the feeling he can feel building in him. He feels like he’s falling.

He puts his head on He Tian’s shoulder.

There’s a moment where nothing happens, and he thinks about pulling away, thinks about how stupid he’s being, but He Tian’s arm moves, and suddenly his hand is at the back of his neck, warm. Guan Shan can feel his callouses that are rough, and the groove of his fingertips that are soft. They trail so gently. Touching feels like something that is new, and foreign. He has to let himself feel it.

 _Friends,_ he thinks. And then, _How long is that going to last?_

‘As long as you want,’ says He Tian, a murmur. Guan Shan realises he has said it aloud. ‘As long as you want.’

 _I wish I knew what I wanted_ , Guan Shan thinks, and doesn’t say it aloud this time. But he knows it’s a lie. He knows exactly how long he wants this:

 _Just as long_ _as you’ll let us have it._


End file.
